Sauveur discovered that multiple vibration modes coexist simultaneously on one string

Evidence

This point was clearer to the younger mathematician and physicist Joseph Sauveur (1653–1716), who coined the terms fundamental and harmonic in 1701. A good namer of things, Sauveur also coined the terms node and acoustics. (Naming phenomena is a surprisingly important part of science, often earning the namer a lot of credit, whether or not they were the first to discover the phenomenon.) Sauveur explained that in pure upper partials a string vibrates in parts, which is quite true: the motion of the string at the second partial is in two halves, with a node in the middle. He was the first to associate the faint upper partials that could be heard when the string is plucked with specific modes of the string. He did not shy away from saying that the these modes could exist simultaneously on the string. This has to be one of the most fundamental discoveries in all of the history of musical sound, yet it is fairly difficult to find reference to it. Portraits of him seem to be scarce to nonexistent. He was mute until the age of five and quite hearing impaired, certainly an unexpected profile for someone who made such fundamental contributions to sound and its perception. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 873

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines fundamental, harmonic, node, and acoustics as Sauveur’s coinations.
• SHARE: The hearing-impaired, mute-until-five Sauveur founding acoustics is a perfect tidbit for a musician or physicist friend.